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Ike sparks ‘certain death’ warning in US Gulf Coast

A Haitian boy picks up beans while hundreds of women line up to receive food from members of the UN Stabilization Mission In Haiti in Praville, Haiti, on Thursday. Tropical Storm Hanna and Hurricane Ike claimed hundreds of lives in the Caribbean country. PHOTO: EPA

Massive Hurricane Ike yesterday bore down on Houston, the fourth-largest US city, sending hundreds of thousands of people fleeing amid a warning that those remaining in low-lying areas “face certain death.”

“All neighborhoods and possibly entire coastal communities will be inundated during the period of peak storm tide,” the National Hurricane Center (NHC) said late on Thursday, referring to land along the Galveston Bay.

“Persons not heeding evacuation orders in single family one or two-story homes will face certain death,” it said.

Galveston Bay stretches 40km inland toward Houston, whose suburbs reach the bay’s coast.

The hurricane, pushing a storm surge as high as 6.5m, was expected to plow onto land late yesterday or early today with a direct hit on Galveston and metropolitan Houston, whose population tops 5.6 million.

Texas Governor Rick Perry also issued an urgent appeal.

“My message to Texans in the projected impact area is this — finish your preparations because Ike is dangerous and he’s on his way,” Perry said.

Authorities in Harris County, whose jurisdiction encompasses Houston, said evacuations in the city’s most flood-prone areas — home to about a quarter-million residents — began at 5pm GMT on Thursday.

Forecasters said Ike, which left more than 100 dead across the Caribbean, would likely barrel ashore packing winds in excess of 190kph.

Texas Lieutenant-Governor David Dewhurst told CNN on Thursday that a mass mobilization was well under way.

“We have been moving supplies and moving buses now for four days,” he said. “We have moved C-130s [transport planes] and ambulances. We have 1,350 buses we have moved into the area.”

Officials said the evacuations began with the elderly, infirm and other residents with special needs. Houston officials planned to reroute highway traffic and said fueling stations would be placed on major roads to facilitate the exodus.

The NHC made its warning about Galveston Bay after it had become clear that some residents resisted the order to clear out, despite warnings that the entire island on which the city is located could be inundated.

“Unless it’s really bad, we don’t want to go anywhere,” resident Leslie LeGrande said.

Alicia Cahill, a public information officer for Galveston, expressed concern that some people were staying put.

“There’s more people here than I would have thought,” she said.

Historical data listed by the NHC justifies Cahill’s concern. The center lists the “Great Storm” of 1900, which slammed Galveston, as the deadliest hurricane in US history, killing at least 8,000 people.

South of Galveston in Freeport, evacuations had cleared out most of the coastal town, with fewer than 20 percent of residents remaining on Thursday, although some still planned to ride out Ike’s wrath, a local TV station reported.

At 6am GMT yesterday, the NHC in Miami said the storm had maximum sustained winds of around 160kph, making it a Category Two storm on the five-level Simpson-Saffir scale.
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